As my regular readers know, I take pictures. Lots of pictures. I take pictures of my cars. I take pictures of my rental cars. For this dive into my photo collection, I am posting some of the more interesting road signs I’ve encountered and photographed over the past 30 years. These are all actual road signs photographed by me: No Google images or meme generator images here.

First up, Stinking Creek, from a 1992 road trip. I believe I photographed this on I-75 in Tennessee, but it was 25 years ago, so I could be wrong. Thanks to the power of the Internet, I found this interesting article of how Stinking Creek got its name (TL;DR; version – it stank).

On this same trip, I spied these speed limit signs in Texas. At the time, the speed limit read like the iTunes agreement, and was so long it had to be spread out over two signs. I don’t know if this is still the case or not – perhaps one of our Texas readers can comment.

Another well-known sign, from a 1994 road trip. I believe it is on I-90 in North Dakota, but I could totally be wrong on this.

Next up: A Road sign in New Mexico, from a 1995 road trip. Remembering to watch for animals for the next 157 miles would challenge the short-term memory of even the most attentive person.

Here is a picture of New Mexico’s famous Devil’s Highway, shot on the same 1995 road trip. Route 666 no longer exists: It was renumbered to Route 491 in 2003.In 1996, I went on a road trip to Mexico (Partially covered in my Rental COAL post). Speed bumps are all over the place (called topes in Spanish). I found the sign amusing, since it resembles something else that I can quite put my fingers on.

In 2008, my wife Kristen and I went to Sedona, Arizona to celebrate my 40th Birthday. For those unfamiliar with Sedona, it is famous for its Martian red rocks. If you look closely at the sign above, someone modified the wording to reflect this.

The time: Summer 2009. The place: The summit of Mount Evans, Colorado. At an elevation of 14,240 ft., this is the highest paved road in North America. If you are suffering from altitude sickness or hypothermia, it is doubtful that you will be able to read a sign this long.

Speaking of dangerous places, we have this trail in Hawaii. As opposed to a single long and wordy sign, we have a plethora of signs with incredibly amusing icons.

Also from Hawaii: As if all the threats from the previous picture weren’t enough, apparently I have to watch out for bees as well.

Lastly from Hawaii, is this gem. Apparently Aloha doesn’t just mean hello and goodbye in Hawaiiian, it also means signal before merging.

I can’t find a picture but Lexington, KY has a street intersection of High and Upper. It is located between the downtown area and the U of K campus, and rumor has it that the city finally had to install security cameras to prevent the street signs from disappearing.

There’s a Bong Street at the entrance to the National Museum of The United States Air Force in Ohio. I had a little chuckle driving into the parking lot and subsequently learned there was a high ranking officer named Bong. Have bongs always been called bongs? The Air Force Museum is a really cool place and definitely worth stopping by for in you are in the Dayton area and have already visited the Packard museum.

That “high ranking officer” would be the Ace of Aces, Major Richard I. Bong, highest-scoring US fighter ace of WWII. I always found it curious that the recreation area named after him is located just about as far away as you can be from his hometown of Poplar, Wisconsin, without leaving the state. Also, I think it’s kind of lamentable that his legacy today is somewhat hampered by the fact that his name, “Dick Bong,” has not one but two inappropriate connotations these days!

The Bong State Recreation Area, which is right in my backyard (okay, about 15 miles from my backyard), was originally going to be an Air Force base, hence the name. I was very young when this was going on, but I recall there being a lot of vocal opposition against the location. It went on for years until finally the Air Force threw in the towel and the state ended up with the land.

Great post. My all-time favorite remains a sign advising a change of driving lanes in North Oxford, which said “Changing Priorities Ahead”. Every time I drove through, I expected to come out a Buddhist on the other side.

I can’t wait to see all the cool songs i know are coming .
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One of my favorites is in Mexico : ” Sal Si Puedes ” (leave if you can) and also in the middle of the jungle in Guatemala, Centro America : ” Gringo Perdido ” (lost White Man) .
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-Nate

This ridiculous collection of parking instructions on one signpost in Culver City, CA made the news in other towns. The city made some changes to this signpost and several others outside a school shortly thereafter.

A local resident posted a photo of the signs on Instagram. He said, “Don’t even think about parking on my street. You’ll need a law degree to figure out if you’re allowed to park here.”

There is sign that gets stolen so regularly in our area , that the local commissioners are asking for some sort of theft proof bolts or change the name or something. Horneytown Rd. I guess we’re all 12 at some point….

This was the first thing I thought of when I saw the title of the post. I remember seeing it featured in a “Top 10 List” edition of Car & Driver back in the early 1990s. The caption was something like, “coming up next exit….a boring Idaho city!”

Two of the more memorable road sign’s I recall were in Northern California, Hooker Road and the town of Weed. Not a road sign, but there was a business sign by the road in front of a hardware warehouse or store in the San Fernando Valley in the ’70’s that had a picture of a crying baby below it’s company name, along with the phrase “having a screw problem?”.

May have been called The National Screw Manufacturing Company, I’ll bet Nate or Paul remembers this one.

Everyone forgot BIG BONE LICK STATE PARK. Off I-71 northern Ky. Tickles the 14 year old in some of us. And I grew up north of Pittsburgh PA. At the confluence of BEAVER RIVER in NORTH BEAVER TOWNSHIP, about 25 miles from BEAVER FALLS…Yuck, yuck, yuck! Surprised none of that showed up.

This hangs in my office as a memento from a project I was Resident Construction Engineer for a few years ago. The contractor made a typo when he ordered his signs and 6 of these were produced. As the RCE I wouldn’t accept the signs and required the contractor to reorder new signs .

Hint: The signs were supposed to be for SC primary route 291. Jason Shafer is not allowed to answer unless no one else gets it as he is a fellow Civil Engineer who works for a similar organization and he’ll know what’s wrong almost immediately.

For fun in interviews with young fools who just got their degrees and want to be civil engineers I always point to the sign and ask them what’s wrong with it. I know, I’m a bad man. I actually had a young lady freshly minted from Clemson University give me the correct answer last summer. The force is strong with that one! She’s been with us nearly a year and hasn’t quit yet so I have hope for the future. Someone has to replace us old guys. . .

I think I took this photo somewhere around New Holland, PA (not far from a huge outdoor car show that I had been visiting at the time) … back in the day, they used to communicate the same concept to motorists just fine on signs bearing a single word: “BUMP”. Not sure when or why it suddenly became necessary to express the same sentiment with three words.

My favourite sign pic I’ve taken is unfortunately on 35mm rather than digital. It’s a picture of the 3 part street sign on the corner of Main Street and East/West Main Street (IE Main street crosses east and west main street where they meet) in some small town I passed though while storm chasing in Oklahoma and Kansas.

I don’t have a photo, but several years ago I saw a pair of signs in front of the San Jose, CA convention center on the same post: “Stop here on red” “No stopping anytime” Another damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation.

On a tangent, I lived in Fort Walton Beach in the early 60’s. My grandmother owned a dogNsuds there. It was destroyed by a hurricane, not sure which one. Some of the signs I remember “Whites only”. Sad.

I don’t have a pic handy, but the nearest intersection to the apartment where I lived 10 years ago had, printed on the road where it ends and meets another road that is perpendicular to it (T shaped with you driving upward), RIGHT TURN ONLY with an arrow pointing right. Across the road was a sign reading ONE WAY with an arrow pointing *left*.

(the road with the printed arrow actually had an unlabelled left/main lane where you were forced to turn left; the street you were turning onto didn’t become one-way until the left side of the perpendicular road. The one-way sign should have been further to the left.